In the foundry casting industry, it is common to clean castings with a manually operated heavy-duty grinder wheel. A relatively large casting may have a number of metal portions, such as flashings, sprue portions, and other rough protuberances which must be removed. Typically, manually operating grinding wheels are used. These wheels are either manually carried or supported by other means and are manually guided and moved. Other industrial areas also may utilize such types of manually operated grinding wheels.
In the conventional manually operated grinding wheels, the operator is subjected to considerable vibrations, heavy loads and other deleterious forces on his body. Hence, it is desirable to have available a heavy-duty grinding wheel which can be remotely operated, rather than operator guided or supported, but which, nevertheless, can be universally movable in the same manner as a manually operated grinding wheel. That is, to be useful for the above purposes, the grinding wheel must be mounted on a support which can be universally moved, i.e., three dimensionally, so as to position the grinding wheel relative to a stationary work-piece in virtually unlimited directional manners.
Although various types of automatic or controllable machine tools, including grinding equipment, have been available, for the purposes of universal movement or control of the grinding wheel, prior equipment has been relatively expensive and complicated. Moreover, such type tools and equipment have not been adapted for foundry snag grinding applications. Thus, the invention herein is concerned with providing a relatively simple, easily operated and maintained, simple to control, support equipment for a grinding wheel which permits movement of and arrangement of the wheel in operative position in three dimensions.